Signal Mountain Middle School sixth-grader Damaris Kleine prepares to board a school bus at 6:45 a.m. Thursday. Mary A. Carskadon has found a correlation between insufficient sleep in adolescents and health issues due to early school start times. She spoke at UTC on Thursday.FAST FACTS• Fourteen percent of high schoolers and 8 percent of middle schoolers are late for or miss school each day because of tiredness.• Thirty percent of high schoolers and 6 percent of middle schoolers fall asleep in school each day.• Wake County, N.C., middle schools switched to an hour later start time and increased test scores in math and reading.• Sleep-deprived teens participate in more violent and property crime than other teens.Sources: National Sleep Foundation, Mary Carskadon, University of Nebraska
Sleep deprivation and early school start times contribute to teenage delinquency, risk-taking, depression, pregnancy, obesity and diabetes, a national sleep expert told Chattanoogans on Thursday.
Mary Carskadon spoke at three events sponsored by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga about her research on sleep and the teenage brain.
Early school start times, changes in teen sleep patterns and outside social pressure are combining to rob teens of vital sleep, which can cause serious problems, Carskadon said.
“Sleep is just getting squeezed out of their lives,” she said.